The Complete Flying Officer X Stories (26 page)

I was trying to think of him as he was when alone, flying by night, when no one could see his face or guess his thoughts; when he was by himself, someone apart, too young to have lived very much, too preoccupied with the question of killing and being killed to be oppressed by any obligations about the lives of others. But it was no use thinking any longer.

“I think I must go,” I said.

Mrs. Bradshaw got up. The pince-nez swung on the gold chain. “It is very kind of you to have come,” she said. “I appreciate it. It is very kind.”

“Not at all.”

“I'll walk with you as far as the gate,” she said.

We walked out of the French windows and along the gravel path of the house, towards the gate at the end of the garden. Our feet made a loud noise on the gravel. The sky was grey with cloud and it was already twilight under the lime trees by the path.

“The days are getting very short,” she said.

We stood at the gate for a moment to say good-bye. Yes, the days were getting short. There were no leaves on the limes. From this time forward we should notice the darkness much more each day.

“Good-bye,” she said. “You have been very kind.” We shook hands. Her hand was very cold and I said good-bye.

“You knew him very well, didn't you?” she said.

“In a way quite well,” I said.

She looked away from me, slightly lifting her face, looking up through the bare trees towards the empty sky, and then spoke quite slowly.

“I sometimes think,” she said. “I never knew him at all.”

On wet afternoons or when cloud base was low and visibility bad and there was no flying, we used to sit in the dispersal hut over the coke stove, eating chocolate, talking, and listening in at intervals to whatever conversation there was on the telephone. You had a cosy feeling in the little hut of belonging to a party of marooned explorers, marooned because the hut was isolated in a corner of the bare field, explorers because whoever was in the hut would be wearing flying jacket and dirty flying boots and looking as if he had just come in from a long march across a dirty and deserted land.

Through the windows on those days you could see the rain pelting down on dispersed Lysanders, making the dull fuselages shine like grey-green oilcloth, the water lying in thick yellow pools on the black perimeter. The ugly friendly Lysanders looked like large awkward hens standing forlornly in the rain. There were mostly sergeants at that dispersal, flying monotonous aircraft on monotonous sorties without even firing a gun, and in time, if you hung about there long enough, you would meet Sergeant Kostek—no decorations, no honours, no happy pictures in the paper—had done three thousand and one hours.

Sergeant Kostek did not look much like a Pole. He did not, in fact, look much like any sort of person in particular; except Sergeant Kostek. He looked more than anything perhaps like a Red Indian who had travelled a long way from home by way of China, Tibet and the Eastern Archipelagos, picking up a little of one civilization and the other on his way. His red, ugly, big-boned face, flat as a Mongolian porter's, had a huge and smiling mouth with thick lips and large teeth like rows of carved white letters. All along the front these letters had been filled with gold and they flashed brilliantly whenever Sergeant Kostek smiled. And since Sergeant Kostek was always smiling, it was these teeth, flashing gold and ivory, that gave him more charm than any ugly man you ever saw.

“How are you, Serge?”

“Me? Oi!” he would say. “I don't know. May be all right.”

“No flying?”

“Is too dirty.”

“How low is she?” We were asking it for something to say.

“Is very low. Four hundred I think.”

“Better tomorrow.”

“May be better. May be worse. I don' know. Just like England.”

“You don't like England?”

“Me? Not like? Is very nice. Is very good. I like it.”

So then I would ask him: “Of all the places you've ever been in, Serge, which do you like best? Apart from the girls.”

“England.” Sergeant Kostek would smile an enormous gold and ivory smile. “Don't include the girls.”

“You just say that. In France you say France, in England you say England. You say it to please the girls.”

“No. Is true. I don' just say. England is best.”

“You mean it?”

“Is true. Is really true.”

“Of all the countries you've been in? Every one?”

“Every one. Yes. Is really true.”

“Why do you like England best?”

The smile on Sergeant Kostek's face would fade for a moment and then brighten again, in a flash of white and gold. It was a very sardonic smile.

“I think maybe because not so many people get shot in England.”

So if there were enough rainy days and you talked to Sergeant Kostek long enough you would get to know something of himself, his bravery and the hours he had flown. You would get to know something of the three thousand hours he had done on Hurricanes and Lysanders and all the now forgotten types broken in the Battle of Poland. And you might also get to know something of the odd hours when Sergeant Kostek, with his feet firmly on the ground, had flown higher than any flight since he had first begun to fly as a boy from school.

Kostek had been born somewhere in the south of the country, about fifty miles from the Russian border, not far from the mountains. He was one of those people you cannot see as a child. You thought of him as having always the big, smiling, gold-stopped teeth. You thought of him as having always the cumbersome jacket and boots of the flyer. You thought of him as having always sat in the crowded dispersal hut, over the little coke stove, smiling and joking and trying to kid some new comer, like myself, into taking a trip with him over the sea.

“Tomorrow will be very nice. You come up with me?”

“No.”

“Is very nice in Lizzie. I take you over the sea-side.”

“No.”

“You don't trust me.”

“No.”

“You think I tip you out?”

“Yes.”

It was nice to be warned about Kostek, who found daily reconnaissance trips in Lysanders so boring that now and then he was glad to give trips to those who wanted them. You came back from those trips like a green and yellow frog; cold and flabby and pop-eyed, with pale and feeble hands. It was better to sit in the warm hut, out of the rain, eating and talking, until finally Sergeant Kostek talked of another hour.

“How I escaped from Poland? Oh! Like all the rest—is long story.”

“They say you shot a couple of people in Hungary. Is it true?”

“Hungary?” The big white teeth would smile. “Hungary? Maybe was. I don't know. Possibly I should shoot somebody. I don't know is long time ago.”

“What about Poland?”

“Poland?” His smile would flash and darken again, bright and sardonic. “That is where they nearly shot me.”

Then for a few moments Kostek would take you back to Poland; to a small white farmhouse with a low wall running along the cow-yard. It was the late dry summer of the invasion and the leaves of the willows by the house were already yellow on the trees. Mountains in the distance, not high enough for snow, had the quality of opaque blue grass in the summer air. The Germans were running all over the country, and there, by the small farmhouse, in the cow-yard under the willow trees in the bright summer weather, they were going to shoot Sergeant Kostek by the wall.

Sergeant Kostek did not describe himself standing by the wall. Hard as it used to be for me to imagine Sergeant Kostek with his big teeth showing anything but a gold and ivory smile, I did not see him smiling now. I saw him standing there rather like a Mongolian porter, impassive and ugly, with his eyes partly on the opaque blue mountains and partly on the firing squad about to lift their rifles. I did not imagine what Sergeant Kostek's thoughts were; whether they were of Poland, of his mother, of the Cross of Christ, or simply of all the hours he had flown; and he never told me. What he did tell me was how long that final moment of waiting seemed; how very much like an hour and not a minute it seemed as the firing squad got ready to raise their rifles, and how as they raised them one German soldier, more nervous than Kostek himself, touched the trigger, and how the rifle went off and there was great confusion and how in that moment Sergeant Kostek, his white teeth possibly smiling now, leapt over the wall and ran.

“Now you know,” he would say, “why I like to be in England.”

“I know,” I said.

And I knew also that that was Sergeant Kostek's hour.

a shaky do — a
doubtful, strange, or unpopular happening; also an aircraft that is shot up in a raid

ammo
— Army term for ammunition

be u.s
. — be unserviceable

be whistled
— be drunk (intoxicated)

brass off —
same as “brown off” — to be fed up

briefing
— giving final instructions in secret before a raid

brown off
— see
brass off

D.F.C. —
Distinguished Flying Cross

erks
— beginners

inter-comm
. — intercommunications

Macchi —
an Italian type of plane

M.E.'s — Messerschmitts

met. — meteorological

ops
. — flight operations

piece of cake —
too easy

popsy —
girl friend

prang —
blast or smash

R/T
connections
— Radio-telephony connections

scrubbed
— cancelled

second dicky
— second pilot

stooge
— deputy; i.e., second pilot or any assistant

stooge round
— fly slowly over an area; patrol; delay landing

tootle in
— fly back to base and land

W.A.A.F
. — Women's Auxiliary Air Force

wrapped up —
smashed up

H. E. Bates was born in 1905 in the shoe-making town of Rushden, Northamptonshire, and educated at Kettering Grammar School. After leaving school, he worked as a reporter and as a clerk in a leather warehouse.

Many of his stories depict life in the rural Midlands, particularly his native Northamptonshire, where he spent many hours wandering the countryside.

His first novel,
The Two Sisters
(1926) was published by Jonathan Cape when he was just twenty. Many critically acclaimed novels and collections of short stories followed.

During WWII he was commissioned into the RAF solely to write short stories, which were published under the pseudonym “Flying Officer X”. His first financial success was
Fair Stood the Wind for France
(1944), followed by two novels about Burma,
The Purple Plain
(1947) and
The Jacaranda Tree
(1949) and one set in India,
The Scarlet Sword
(1950). Other well-known novels include
Love for Lydia
(1952) and
The Feast of July
(1954).

His most popular creation was the Larkin family which featured in five novels beginning with
The Darling Buds of May
in 1958. The later television adaptation was a huge success.

Many other stories were adapted for the screen, the most renowned being
The Purple Plain
(1947) starring Gregory Peck, and
The Triple Echo
(1970) with Glenda Jackson and Oliver Reed.

H. E. Bates married in 1931, had four children and lived most of his life in a converted granary near Charing in Kent. He was awarded the CBE in 1973, shortly before his death in 1974.

Discover other books by H. E. Bates published by Bloomsbury Reader at
www.bloomsbury.com/HEBates
.

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Stories compiled from
The Greatest People in the World and Other Stories
, first Published in Great Britain in 1942 by Jonathan Cape Ltd,
There's Something in the Air
first published in Great Britain in 1943 by Alfred A. Knopf and
How Sleep the Brave and Other Stories
, first published in Great Britain in 1943 by Jonathan Cape Ltd

‘Fishers' first published in Great Britain in 1941 in
The Listener
‘Happy Christmas Nastashya' first published in Great Britain in the
Royal Airforce Journal
‘The Bell' first published in 1943 in
Jerusalem Radio Forum
,
Royal Air Force Journal
, and
Times Literary Supplement
‘From This Time Forward' first published in Great Britain in 1943 in
Printer's Pie -- A Miscellany by Leading Writers
by Hutchinson
‘The Three Thousand and One Hours of Sergeant Kostek' first published in Great Britain in 1943 in
English Story
by Collins